


The Love You Choose

by shallows



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Adoption, Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, Fluff, Future Fic, Kid Fic, M/M, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-08 03:02:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14095713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shallows/pseuds/shallows
Summary: Stiles had grown up to discover that he was, in fact, a morning person.





	The Love You Choose

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is based on one of my photosets, written after being asked about my headcanons for the children and how they came to be. You can find it at http://sterek.tumblr.com/post/149442118101/ 
> 
> Thank you so much to acetronaught at tumblr for being a wonderful beta <3 Any other mistake is my own.
> 
> (Don't judge my inability to link things, I'm new to the world of posting to AO3. I'm very good with technology otherwise!)
> 
> Enjoy :)

Stiles had grown up to discover that he was, in fact, a morning person.

It hadn't always been like this. When he was a kid, running on too much sugar and excess energy from his ADHD, he often suffered from insomnia that would keep him up all night until the early hours of the morning before he crashed from exhaustion, making waking up early in the morning a nightmare worse than his sleepless nights.

After getting diagnosed and medicated the insomnia lessened, but he was still a kid and as such he still cherished the days he got to sleep in and bemoaned his way through school mornings.

As a teen, after losing his mom, having to watch many of his not-quite-friends die, and not dealing with the personal consequences of the nogitsune, the insomnia came back with a vengeance. And when the insomnia was the least of his problems, his nightmares came to take its place. He had gotten through senior year by the skin of his teeth, running mostly on coffee and high hopes that he wouldn't crash from sleep deprivation before finally finishing high school and putting away this chapter of his life.

Back then, mornings had seemed dark and dreadful and completely unwanted. They had meant little to no sleep, the realization that everything was still as shitty as the day before and one more day of pretending to be fine.

Now, sitting at the porch of a house with his name on the mortgage, his laptop with the second draft of his new book sitting on his lap, and a steaming mug of coffee that read "2nd best dad" (because his kids were assholes, albeit incredibly cute ones) in his hand as he listened to the sounds of his family waking up, Stiles could barely remember what it was like to hate mornings.

He sat his laptop and mug down on the porch when he heard the creaking of the backdoor, a sure sign that Leia was awake. Stiles smiled fondly at the sight of his 15-year-old, still clad in her pajamas and rubbing her sleepy eyes as she made her way to sit beside him on the porch steps.

"Mornin'," she said as he put his arm around her shoulders and let her snuggle up to him like they did every morning.

"Good morning, baby. Sleep well?"

Leia merely grunted, a soft little noise, and snuggled closer to him, her nose dragging along the collar of his shirt like she loved to do. The first time she’d done it, Stiles had looked smugly at Derek and called it scent marking, to which Derek had rolled his eyes. She never stopped doing it, and Stiles assumed that, scent marking or not, it was something that brought her comfort.

Leia was a quiet and soft girl, her temperament so similar to Derek's post-Mexico it would've been impossible to not mistake her for his biological daughter had she looked anything like him physically.

She had been their first, dropped into their lives as a baby when Stiles was barely 22. He'd been just fresh off college with a finished programming degree he ended up forsaking to dedicate his time to writing. Leia, a newborn werewolf turned omega after an internal war decimated her pack, had been the definition of unexpected and unplanned.

Stiles still remembers the day they found her as though it had happened just last week, and how that beautiful and terrified baby had stopped her wailing the minute Derek took her into his arms for the first time.

She wasn't supposed to be the start of anything for them. They had been young - far too young, according to John Stilinski, who had nonetheless doted on Leia like she was the second coming the minute he got to hold her as well. Stiles had just sent out his first book for review in hopes of finding someone who could publish him and Derek had still been in vet school trying to make up for all the years he lost not finishing high school after the fire.

Stiles remembers Derek looking at him, that deeply vulnerable look in his eyes as the baby in his arms stared at him unblinkingly, and saying: "She's so small." It didn’t take more than that for them to take her home with them, bath her, clothe her, feed her, and then lie her between them on the bed in Derek's loft they had just started to call 'theirs'. They had told each other in soft tones: _just for now, just until we find her a home that actually knows how to care for her. Just for now._

In the end, they hadn't been able to give her up, which Stiles suspected had been decided the second they they laid eyes on her. Derek had been the one naming her Leia, something that no one ever seems to believe. Derek had said "our girl is strong" and that had been it. Leia Stilinski-Hale was born and she was only the first of many.

Noah and Laura came two years later, after a call from Kira in the middle of the night.

“There's been a fire,” she had said, and both men had jumped out of bed on cue, Leia a sleeping bundle in their arms as they made their way to Kira's rescue home.

  
After breaking up with Scott and spending over a year finding herself, Kira had come back to Beacon Hills a stronger, more mature and experienced version of herself and declared she was going to build a home and rescue supernatural children when no one else could. No one had contested her and a day later she had received a substantial donation from an anonymous benefactor everyone knew to be Derek and so her rescue home was built.

Thinking back on it, it was all Kira's fault. She had been the one bringing the news about Leia’s pack and taking them with her to look for survivors. And she had found Laura and Noah too.

The day they met, the kids had been two scrawny little things covered in ash and soot, sitting in Kira's living room and glaring them down while bravely pretending they weren't falling apart. Noah was the oldest and their only human kid, just 6 years old but unmistakably fierce as he held his little sister and tried to shelter her from them. Laura had been 5, with black hair and piercing eyes the kind of green Stiles had only seen in old photos of Laura Hale.

The tragic coincidence of the events had hit both men then.

“I thought you'd like to talk to them,” Kira had said, her eyes on Derek who couldn't stop staring at this little girl who had his sister's name, his sister's eyes and a life story the likes of which Derek had endured before and had had to live with for years and years after.

Derek had bolted then, eyes bright with tears he still hadn't believed he deserved to shed. That night, Stiles and Derek laid together on their bed, noses brushing softly against each other and hands linked together on top of Leia's tummy as she slept, little sighs escaping her mouth every so often.

“Kira will find them a new home, a good one,” Derek had whispered in the quiet of the room.

Stiles had nodded, his nose moving softly along Derek's cheek. “She will,” he’d replied even though it hadn't been a question.

Kira had found many children throughout the years and thanks to her tenacity, along with Lydia’s connections and no nonsense attitude, Jackson’s law degree, Danny’s propensity to inevitably commit cybercrime and their connections with the hospital and the police, she had managed to find a good home for every child without fail. Laura and Noah would be alright in Kira's hands, there was no doubting that.

Stiles had looked Derek in the eye not smushed into the pillow, seeing the open, raw emotions radiating from Derek reflected on the surface of that bright mesh of color.

“But that's not what you want,” Stiles had said.

Derek had smiled sadly, the corner of his lips raising just the slightest bit and said, “No.”

The next day they went back to Kira’s, and three months later the Stilinski-Hale loft had become too small for five.

They built a house on the preserve a few miles north of the ruins of the Hale home. Building a life in Beacon Hills after the fire had never been the plan; not for Derek and Laura when they left for New York, not for Derek when he came back to find out the last of his family had been taken from him, not for Stiles after the horrors of his teen years, and not for Derek and Stiles as a couple and as two better, less haunted individuals when it all started to fall into place.

When Leia came into the mix they had talked about leaving, about finally abandoning Beacon Hills and everything that came with being a part of this town. They had confessed, in the privacy of their room as they each laid on their sides facing each other, that they were scared of staying, of hoping for the calm of the new days with the storm looming ahead without either of them noticing it. They had a baby to think of now, a little person who depended on them 100% and who, no matter what, was going to come before anything else.

Beacon Hills was calm then, but would that last forever? When does a beacon stop being a beacon? How do you cork the bottle so that it will stay sealed forever? The world is chaos, everything affected by entropy and nothing is ever really safe. It wasn’t their responsibility anymore to take care of the people of Beacon Hills; in fact, it had never been, they’d just lost themselves in misplaced guilt and carried the weight on their shoulders until they nearly drowned. They learned from that.

Ultimately, they chose to stay. Maybe it was the wrong decision - they both dwelled on it more than they probably should, wondered if they had been stupid, reckless and careless for not running away from all of this. But for all its flaws (and there were a lot) Beacon Hills was the history of their people, intrinsically a part of each of them.

So they stayed and they built a home in a place that was the Hales’ but was also theirs, Derek and Stiles’, something they built as a unit and as a family.

They were kidding themselves when they built a house with enough rooms to shelter a soccer team and told themselves that it didn’t mean a thing (“Just so the rest of the pack can stay over,” Derek had said and Stiles had nodded along, “Of course, wouldn’t want them all to sleep on the couch.”) But even then they knew Kira hadn’t been the only one who came out of all the chaos wanting a purpose, wanting to help and shelter and be someone’s positive, guiding light.

Erica came next, although Erica hadn't always been her name. Kira had rescued the little kitsune from an abusive home when she was 5 years old. She was a frightened little thing covered in dirt and bruises that didn’t seem possible for a supernatural creature to have. She had seemed like the perfect match to be Kira’s first official child - a kitsune, someone who would benefit from Kira’s family history and Japanese heritage. But Kira had called, her voice with an edge of desperation, begging Derek and Stiles to take the kid, to do this for her because Kira… Kira couldn’t be a mother just then. Derek and Stiles were settled down, they had their normal jobs - Derek had finally finished vet school by then - they had a home, they had what it took to raise a child and Kira didn’t. She still had a mission, she said, she still had so many kids to help, she still had so many homes to fix before she could start building her own.

So they fostered Erica, who at the time didn’t even have a name, and anyone who only knows the Erica of the present - a lively thing, always with a laugh on her face and so full of love to give to everyone who asks for it - will never understand why Derek and Stiles agree she was the one who took the longest to adapt to their family.

All of their other kids had adapted to their new life fairly well. Leia had been with them from day one; they were her only family, the only thing she knew. Noah was never a hard kid to handle, he was the oldest and by rule he adapted to the rhythm of Laura - if Laura was happy, Noah was generally content - and Laura had always been a firecracker, ready to accept better things. Both biological siblings had come from a pack who loved them before Derek and Stiles were even offered the chance to. All their 3 first kids had only known happy, loving homes. But not Erica.

Kira had found her somewhere in a hospital in Colorado after her human caretaker almost beat her to death, birth parents and other relatives unknown. (Stiles still feels sick every time he remembers and wonders the amount of strength it must take for a human to almost kill a kitsune with just the power of his fists.) Lydia was on the case immediately and pulled her contacts to get the child transferred to Beacon Hills Memorial as soon as she was stable enough to travel.

The first time Derek and Stiles met her she had been cowering in the corner of the hospital room, sobbing and hysterical as a nurse talked to her in soft tones, hoping to give her comfort and promise no one was going to hurt her, not anymore.

Stiles had seen many things in his life, but he would swear he had never heard anything more heartbreaking than the sobbing of that child.

Erica was taken to Kira’s rescue home two weeks later. She was a quiet girl - not the type of quiet Leia had always been, no; Erica was the type of quiet that came from fearing any noise would bring wrath down on her, that came from a place of survival and not personality - and she mostly stayed huddled in her bed, staring wide-eyed at the walls, waiting for the moment the calm would come to an end.

On the rare occasion that she spoke, Erica had mostly done it in Japanese, her English rudimentary enough for them to assume she hadn’t been in the United States for long. They did their best to search for her family, Danny using his skills to hack into police databases and try to find a missing child’s report that was a match, but nothing ever came out of it.

As a rule, Kira tried to not have kids in her rescue home for more than a couple months. Her home, she said, was just one stop in all these kids’ journey. She existed to give them shelter, feed them and protect them while they were in her care, but she wasn’t the endgame for any of them. Kira worked tirelessly for these kids, making sure to put them in trusted foster homes as soon as she could and then working to get them a real, lasting family. She traveled a lot, building connections and looking for children, first outside Beacon Hills and then eventually outside California. Isaac helped Kira in taking care of the home and the kids who passed through, but it was always temporary.

Erica stayed in Kira’s rescue home for 6 months. Even after being taken away from all the violence she had been subjected to, after the bruises in her body had completely vanished, after being sheltered by good, loving people for months, the girl was still fragile and often times still terrified. She was prone to dissolving into panic attacks, so they all made a unanimous decision to not move her into the Stilinski-Hale home too soon.

Derek and Stiles would visit her most days, often times taking their kids with them, and they’d all sit in her bed with her and read her stories she didn’t always understand, trying their best to make a connection. With time, they got better at communicating with her after Noshiko offered to help Derek and Stiles learn Japanese while the little girl developed her English skills. It was far from perfect and Stiles would admit that he butchered the new language far too often, but it was a start - hopefully, the start of something good for all of them.

She started visiting their home after some weeks, the fox plushie that Leia, Laura and Noah had chosen for her clenched tightly under her arm and one thumb in her mouth, a habit they learned seemed to both give her comfort and terrify her when she noticed anyone looking. She’d look wide-eyed around the house every time she visited, her eyes always lingering on every exit.

On one of her visits she had noticed the blonde girl among the pack photos they displayed all over their living room and she had taken her thumb off her mouth and quietly said, “She is pretty.”

Derek had smiled at her, his hand rising to her little shoulder before he stopped himself, remembering that surprise touches weren’t something she took well. “She was,” he’d said, the sorrow in his eyes evident. “And she was brave, too.”

Erica had looked up at Derek, her little eyebrows furrowing in confusing. “Not anymore?” she had asked.

Derek’s smile had turned sad as he looked up at the photo again and he had hesitated before saying, “She’s in a better place now. She doesn’t have to be brave anymore.”

Erica had nodded, understanding what Derek wasn’t saying. _She's dead and she's never coming back to us. I hope she's happy wherever she is; it hurts too much to believe she's not._

“What was her name?”

“Erica.”

At the 6-month mark, Erica (who at the time everyone had taken to calling "little Kira") officially became their foster child. Over the next year, she improved considerably. Her English became clearer by the day, her sunny personality starting to shine through and she became more trusting of her new family and the world around her, but she still had panic attacks far too often and found it hard to ask for things she wanted.

One day Stiles had found her sitting on the grass in their backyard, her fox plushie in one hand and one of Leia’s old dolls in the other, her eyebrows scrunched up together as she looked at the ground. He had sat beside her and waited it out - pressing for information was never an option with her.

Eventually she had turned to him and asked, “Do people get to choose new names?”

The little girl hadn’t had a birth certificate when they found her that first day and couldn’t recall ever being called by any name by her caretaker, who was the only person she ever claimed to know. Jackson had managed to get her a provisory birth certificate while she was in the hospital, with a provisory name. Stiles and Derek had decided to give her time to choose her own name when they fostered her and worked on the adoption, time to choose her own identity, and it was exciting to know she was finally at that point.

Stiles had reigned the excitement in and calmly said, “Sometimes. Why are you wondering about that?”

“I’d like to have a new name,” she had replied, her eyes staring into his unwaveringly.

He remembered watching silently as Erica fondled the messy hair on top of the doll’s head. It had been an ugly doll, clearly the one that had been vandalized by Laura when Stiles had forbidden her from shaving half of her hair when she was 8. The doll had just about 5 patches of hair separated all over the scalp, one of her eyes was smashed in and there were red marker tracks all over its face and legs. Stiles had cringed - he always thought his kids were perfect, but clearly maybe not all of them were. How had this terrifying doll even ended up in Erica’s hands?

“You want us to call you something else?” he had asked slowly.

Erica, who they had still called little Kira at the time, had nodded. “Yes. If that’s okay.”

“What do you want to be called?”

“Erica. Like your brave friend.”

Stiles had to pause. It was something that haunted them every time they brought a new kid into the family, the idea that they could fail one of their children, the idea that they could never be enough. The race, gender or species of their kids was never a topic that hindered their decision when they considered an adoption - their kids were their kids no matter what - but the fear of fucking up always lingered in the back of their minds.

Derek and Stiles always tried their best, hoping it would be enough. Stiles had made a powerpoint presentation for Laura’s first menstruation, they both had stayed up at night multiple times watching videos on how to take care of a little black girl’s hair for Leia (they turned out pretty terrible at it and Leia had a lot of embarrassing pictures from a childhood of bad haircuts and hairdos) and the entire family had biweekly Japanese lessons so that Erica could be surrounded by her mother language at home, even if none of them could ever even come close to pass as a fluent speaker. They weren’t perfect and they knew there were always going to be things they’d fail at or wouldn’t understand enough, but they always tried.

Hearing Erica say she wanted Erica Reyes’ name had left Stiles floored, unbalanced. For some a name is just a name, but for most a name is an identity, an extension of our being. Growing up, Stiles had let himself be bullied out of his Polish name. Even though _Stiles_ is who he is now and he is proud of what it represents, he sometimes still regrets letting his Polish name his mother gave him be forgotten in detriment of a nickname that he created so he didn’t feel as otherly in the middle of people who often treated him like dirt. Stiles didn’t want his girl to resent him for not giving her a Japanese name, because she was Japanese and American and a Stilinski-Hale and she should never be ashamed or detached from any part of what made her _her_.

In the end Stiles and Derek had decided the best for their child was to follow the path that allowed Erica to heal and be happy. Erica Reyes had become sort of a hero in their little girl’s life, and if the kitsune wanted part of Erica Reyes to always be with her, who were they to deny her the chance?

That night, they had all spread out on Derek and Stiles’ bed, the little kitsune in the middle of her parents, Leia with her head on Derek’s thigh, Noah lying against Stiles’ legs and Laura sitting cross-legged at the end of the bed with her laptop on her lap as she googled Japanese names they could use as a middle name, an agreement they made with Erica as a way of allowing her to keep her whole identity.

“What about Mitsuko?” Laura had said with enthusiasm after an hour of trying out names. “It’s supposed to mean ‘light child’.”

They had all perked up. Erica was a thunder kitsune like Kira and that name seemed wonderfully fitting.

“Erica Mitsuko Stilinski-Hale,” Derek had said, his hand running softly along Erica’s hair as she snuggled up to him. “Does that sound weird?”

“I like it,” Erica had said, grinning, and so, bright and happy Erica Misuko Stilinski-Hale was reborn.

Riley had come last, already 14 years old. In a lot of ways, Riley was the exception to the rule. They met Riley the first time when Laura brought him to their house one day claiming he was her new best friend.

Laura had gone through a rebellious phase when she was 11, showing a refusal to do school work and study for her tests that ended up in her staying a year behind. So, even though they were a year apart, both Laura and Riley ended up in the same class that year and became close friends quickly.

Riley was an orphan who had lived in a human orphanage at the time. He was a spark, even more powerful than Stiles, which, as he grew up, had often led to light bulbs shattering, things flying out of place and broken furniture that would mysteriously fix itself again. He would have benefited from a house like Kira’s when he lost his family, but instead he had been thrown into the human system and had to hide his abilities from everyone for many years. Finding the Stilinski-Hale family and getting to meet people who were as different as him albeit in their own way was the first time Riley had felt like he was home.

At first, none of them really considered adopting Riley even though they were aware the kid didn’t have a family. Stiles still felt shame about it, wondered if the reason they never even thought about it was because Riley was already a teen, past the age most people believe a child is eligible for adoption. They had accepted him into their family with open arms, but in the capacity of Laura’s best friend and never as one of their children, even when Riley took to spending most nights in their house as the months went by and already had a bedroom everyone thought of as _Riley's room_.

The change came one unfortunate afternoon, when a thunderstorm hit Beacon Hills with rain so intense it almost flooded the town.

Riley had been out that day a town over with his baseball team and they had just been making their way back on the school bus when the storm peaked and made them swerve off the road and crash.

Both Derek and Stiles had known loss intimately, the kind of loss that could bring a god to their knees in agonizing pain, the kind of loss that’s lasting and remains an open wound for years and years after it happens to you. They learned throughout the years and a lot of therapy that sometimes there’s no way of avoiding loss, but there are a number of different ways to make it less brutal, to make it so that the happiness that comes before it makes an impression that is positive and lasting.

All their losses had now made them more open to the good things in their life, more open to their family and more open to each other. They told their kids they loved them every day, at least one day a week they had a family day that was just for all of them, they went to all their kids sports games and school plays and science fairs, they made sure their kids knew just how much they meant to them. But somehow Riley had been left on the sidelines of their lives, with only a foot in, stuck in some kind of sentimental limbo.

They hadn’t really realized up until then just how much Riley came to mean to them, even though Stiles had taken to send the kid a text every night to make sure he washed his teeth, even though Derek had a photo of Riley among all the photos of his kids he had in his office at the vet clinic he had bought off Deaton when he retired to Hawaii, even though they had let Erica tell strangers Riley was her brother more than once.

There’s not really a way to describe the pain and shame and impotence they had felt when they found out through Laura on Monday morning that Riley had been taken to the hospital Saturday night. The kid that they had taken to thinking of as their child, even if only subconsciously, had been hurt and they hadn’t even _known_. Finding out about it evoked a feeling of failure as parents, the kind neither of them had felt in the many years of fostering and adopting their other kids. And Riley hadn’t even been officially theirs.

That day, after they had entered the hospital room and seen Riley sedated and hurt, they had made their decision.

Derek had sat down gingerly on the chair beside Riley’s hospital bed, his hand lying on top of the boy’s forearm and squeezing softly. Riley had smiled brightly at him, then at Stiles who had been standing behind Derek.

Derek had said then, “How are you feeling, kid?”

Riley had smiled, lifting his forearm out of Derek’s reach only to lay his hand on top of Derek’s and holding it in a grip so tight his knuckles turned white. It was as though he was trying his best to never let go of this moment, to never let go of _them_.

“I’m okay,” he’d said, then looked down. “It’s just a broken leg.”

Derek had squeezed his hand back. Both he and Stiles had wanted to say more, to make Riley understand that it hadn’t been _just_ a broken leg and a few bruises, not to them at least. But, somehow, it hadn’t felt right to dwell on the negative while the kid was lying in a hospital bed, so Stiles had said “The doctor said you can go home now if you don’t feel any pain.”

Riley had nodded then looked around, turning his head to look past the door and into the empty hallway. “Is anyone from the orphanage around? I don’t have my phone to call them.”

Derek had turned slightly to look at Stiles and they had smiled encouragingly at each other before Stiles had said, “We already called them. They agreed to let us take you home for tonight.”

“Your home?” Riley had asked, confused. He usually slept at their house by Laura’s request, never because of Stiles or Derek.

“Yes,” Derek had said. “And…” he’d paused, gulping, before continuing. “Your home, too. If you’d like that. For more than just tonight, I mean.”

Riley’s eyes had widened then as he turned his head back and forth to look at both of them, speechless. Derek had felt the kid’s hand start to shake slightly in his grip as the kid understood exactly what Derek had meant and asked, in a voice so vulnerable it hurt both adults in that place right between their ribs, “Are you sure?”

“We’ve been sure for a while, kid,” Stiles had replied with a soft smile. “We just didn’t know.”

Riley had nodded, tears gathering in his lower lids. “Okay,” he’d said in a quiet voice. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Derek had repeated and then leaned down to carefully wrap his arms around the kid as Riley cried and held his new father back.

And suddenly they had found themselves 5 wonderful kids. Both Derek and Stiles had almost died way too many times to count, often times both had wondered throughout the years if they would even make it past their teen years or past their 20’s. And if they did make it, both had wondered if it was even possible to ever get themselves a normal life or if normalcy and the happiness that came with it were concepts too far away to reach.

But, against all odds, they had found in each other the power to reach out and grab the life they wanted, and they had found in every single one of their kids a bright spot of happiness and another reason to always keep fighting for the things they were slowly starting to believe they deserved.

This was their family and all these kids were their whole hearts.

*~*

“Pancakes are ready!” Noah shouted from the kitchen, startling Stiles in the quiet of the backyard.

Noah had been in New York for over two months so he could study for his finals without family distractions. It was rare for him to stay gone for that long considering that Derek had a special account he created with many thousands of dollars so he could fly Noah home as often as possible, and they had missed him too much. But today was a special day and special days meant Noah home from college, making pancakes for everyone like he always did when he was home.

Over the years they had become one of those families. They had become the slightly embarrassing family who is always on the front row cheering for one of the kids, the loud family who had lunch every sunday at a local diner and always knocked over at least one glass of juice, the family of seven who always went to the movies together and sneaked in with their snacks even though Derek was always caught because he was too much of a do-gooder.

Today was Leia’s first art show, even though she was a 15-year-old black girl and most people would say she had no business trying to be an artist, which only meant every single one of the pack members would make this the biggest deal of the century in Beacon Hills.

Stiles looked down at Leia, who appeared to be half asleep and was drooling a little on his sleep shirt. Stiles smirks, albeit fondly, and shook her softly until she blinked up at him.

“Are you nervous?” he asked. Leia wasn’t the kind of girl who got nervous easily, but she was also very quiet and he wanted to make sure she wasn’t having a meltdown insider her head.

Leia rolled her head on his shoulder and smiled, still sleepy. “Not really. Is that weird?”

Stiles laughed and shook his head. “It’s not weird. Your art is amazing, there’s nothing to be nervous about.”

Leia smiled bashfully and put her arms around his torso, squeezing a little too hard, which made Stiles huff and remind her he was still a puny human. She was at the age that her werewolf powers were finally developing into their final state and was just growing into her strength. But Stiles would never blame her for forgetting herself, especially when she looked so happy every time Derek praised her on how strong and fast she was becoming.

The back door creaked open and both Leia and Stiles looked back to see Noah’s face peeking out, his eyebrows scrunched up a lot like Derek’s and his lips pursed.

“Why does no one ever come when I call? Next time I won’t make anyone pancakes and you’ll have to deal with dad’s burnt toast and Laura’s stinky smoothies.”

Leia chuckled against Stiles’ arm that was still around her shoulders while Stiles gasped, faking scandalized, and put a hand to his chest dramatically.

“You wouldn’t do that to your father who loves you!”

Noah raised his left eyebrow in challenge. “I’m throwing the pancakes out in the next 20 seconds.”

Both Stiles and Leia ran after Noah as he dashed back into the kitchen, Stiles yelling “Unfair! Human father here!” at his kids’ backs as they all piled into the room that smelled like chocolate chip pancakes and heaven.

Derek, still in his worn sleep pants, was already in the room, leaning against the counter with his mug of heavily sugared coffee as he surveyed the room with raised eyebrows and a little smirk on his face half hidden by the mug. Stiles leaned against the wall opposite Derek with his own mug of coffee and winked at him. The rest of the kids, bar Laura who was always late for everything, filed into the room in a cacophony of loud conversation and chairs scraping against the floor as they took their seats around the table where Noah was distributing pancakes and glasses of milk and juice.

Laura walked in a few seconds later, the only one already dressed, although she seemed to have missed (or most likely ignored) it when Stiles had said “I want everyone dressed like they weren’t raised by wolves” the night before. Although, thinking back on it, it was probably his fault. None of his kids ever seemed to want to listen to what they considered terrible dad jokes.

“Laura,” Stiles started when he looked at his 17-year-old, raising a hand to pinch his nose between thumb and forefinger. “You are not wearing that.”

Laura gave him her trademark stinky face she always pulled out when she thought she was right and no one could prove her wrong. “Yes, I am wearing this, dad. I will not conform to society’s dress code. There’s nothing wrong with showing some skin.”

Stiles looked down at the shirt she had modified to a crop top. Half of her stomach was on full display, but Stiles was more worried about the words “cougars' den” displayed across Laura’s chest.

“It’s not because it’s revealing, it’s because that shirt is embarrassing. No cool teen wears that!”

Laura scoffed and sat at the table, stealing the maple syrup from Riley’s hands and drizzling it all over her pancakes while ignoring her brother’s protests. “You did,” she said to Stiles. “This shirt was literally yours.”

Stiles glared at Derek when the werewolf chuckled from the other side of the room, probably remembering the very young, very dorky Stiles who once upon a time had worn that same shirt.

“And that’s exactly my point. I don’t want you wearing anything with letters to your sister’s art show.”

“All my shirts have letters, dad.”

“Then use something of Leia’s.”

Leia lifted her head in panic, probably already imagining the atrocities Laura would do to her clothes if she got her hands on them, but Laura was already on the defence. “No way, Leia’s clothes are the definition of boring.”

“They are not boring,” Leia exclaimed, now more offended than panicked.

“Yeah, they are. You go shopping with Aunt Lydia. It’s all about what some snobs consider fashion and it has no personality.”

Riley scoffed from beside Laura and stole the maple syrup back, making Stiles cringe as a string of sticky syrup spread over the table.

“Not everyone wants to look like a savage the way you do, Laura,” he said calmly, not taking his eyes off his pancakes and Laura turned to him.

“You can’t talk! You’re the one who wears sweatpants almost every day.”

Riley rolled his eyes. “They’re not sweatpants, they’re sportswear. And I only wear them when I have practice in the morning.”

“Keep telling yourself that.”

“Kids,” Derek finally intervened, and both Riley and Laura grumbled but quieted down. Erica was sitting next to Noah giggling, the corners of her mouth sticky with maple syrup. Derek turned to Laura. “Please go put something else on.”

Laura sighed the deep, loud sigh of a teenage girl and got up from the table dramatically only to come back a couple minutes later with her favorite _Teen Wolf_ shirt. Because she’s literal like that.

“Really?” Stiles said, deadpan.

Laura raised her eyebrow in challenge. “It’s either this or nothing. It’s an art show, I get to make a statement.”

Stiles looked at Derek, who was calmly sipping at the rest of his coffee and looking back from the other side of the room, and raised his arms as if asking, are you seeing this?

“I like it,” Derek said and Laura raised a hand so they could high-five each other.

Stiles groaned. “Fine. But just so you know, you’re a softie.”

Derek grinned at him. It was a gorgeous and bright thing, full of white teeth and bright multicolored eyes and laugh lines that became deeper as his grin widened, dimples just barely showing beneath his greying beard. And Stiles couldn’t help it; he grinned back.

You know how they say that every marriage is the same, that it starts with a full-blown passion that emcompasses every cell of your body and that it simmers down as the years pass, as the kids multiply and you stop having time or willingness to love as ardently as you did at the beginning? That was never the case for them.

They had gotten married some months after adopting Noah and Laura, a small gathering at the courthouse with the pack followed by a private mating under the moon (because Stiles had been reading about werewolf traditions that year and there was no way he was letting that one go and, anyway, Derek didn’t protest much).

Stiles still remembers wondering if he was making the wrong decision by marrying Derek, only because that day he hadn’t felt nervous at all. Even as Lydia helped him get ready in his old childhood bedroom, as he drove his Jeep (all dolled up and shiny) to the courthouse and as he stood before the official and held his soon-to-be husband’s hand, he never felt a single ounce of his body screaming with nervousness. Instead, he felt grounded, at peace with himself. And wasn’t that supposed to be a bad sign? Everyone always said that it’s normal to be nervous at your own wedding, so what did it mean that he wasn’t, at all?

He would never forget the soft, somewhat nostalgic look on his father’s face when Stiles had asked if the way he was feeling was normal. His father had laid his hand on Stiles’ shoulder in that comforting way he had always done, his left thumb tracing the wedding ring he still wore, and said “There’s no right way to feel, son, there’s only _your_ way. If Derek is the one then you’ll know it. Your love for him and the family you’re building together is the only thing you need to feel right now.”

Stiles had thought deep and hard about it, about how Derek wasn’t his first anything - not first kiss, not first crush, not first home, not even first time - and how he wanted Derek to be his every last thing or, if life chose to allow him such impossible thing, his eternal everything.

There was no one else, in the entire wide world, perhaps in the entire universe, who could fill Stiles’ heart as soundly and as completely as Derek did. Derek and their children were the beginning and the end of everything good and pure in Stiles’ life after the horrors of his teenage years. They were all a gift Stiles would never take for granted and would always cherish with all his heart.

Derek had unconsciously left bits and pieces of himself all over every corner of Stiles’ life, to the point of them becoming so intrinsically part of each other they were at the same time two separate individuals and one being. And Stiles knew, with every single tiny atom of his being that he loved Derek more than he had ever loved anyone who came before him and, perhaps unhealthily, he knew he loved Derek more than he would ever love anyone who came after him, too.

So they had gotten married and they had made a life for themselves and their kids that was, against all odds, _good_. And as Stiles stood in that bright kitchen he owned, surrounded by the sounds of their kids getting ready for another big family day, and looking into Derek’s beautiful, happy eyes as his husband looked back, Stiles felt like he could be and like he could do just about anything.

Derek put his mug down without taking his eyes off Stiles and walked around the table and their messy kids until he was standing right in front of Stiles. Derek’s left hand touched Stiles’ shirt near his stomach and Stiles looked down to see the wedding band glinting as the bright sunlight draped over it through the window.

Stiles lifted his hand to touch the back of Derek’s neck and squeezed as they grinned doppily at each other. After so many years, Stiles still felt as in love with Derek as he had the day they got married and, maybe, impossibly, even more in love than he was back then.

They were still the same Stiles and Derek who bickered about almost everything, who fought often and even more often ended fights with sex, who had learned things they hated about living together and who still frustrated each other at least once every day. But they were also StilesAndDerek, who were more complete and less broken versions of themselves, who gave kids happy homes and raised them with all the love they could give, who didn’t know how to live in a world without the other. And Stiles knew that would always be enough.

Derek leaned in for a kiss and Stiles smiled against his mouth, breaking it off with a sigh when he heard what sounded like one of his kids complaining about Laura pinching them.

Stiles looked at Derek and lifted his chin in challenge as he said, “No more kids.”

Derek chuckled softly, moved his hand from Stiles’ stomach to his back and brought him forward until they were touching from head to toe.

“I won’t make any promises.”

Really, how could Stiles not love mornings?

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! This is the first time I finished writing a fic in 3 years, so I was hesitant to post it, but I hope you enjoyed it either way :)


End file.
